


Pegasus in Flight

by Luthien



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-07
Updated: 2005-12-07
Packaged: 2017-10-06 00:43:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/47799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luthien/pseuds/Luthien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some people decide what they want out of life at an early age, and never waver from their goal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pegasus in Flight

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written in 2005, so a few details have been jossed since then.

Some people decide what they want out of life at an early age, and never waver from their goal. The girl who wanted to be a doctor from the moment she cut open her baby doll with her mother's kitchen knife at the age of four, and then spent a frustrating twenty minutes with a blunt tapestry needle trying to sew the severed pieces back together. The boy who was always trying to take apart every appliance in the house - not that there were many, in those days - in order to find out how they worked so that he could put them back together more effectively was only ever going to be an engineer. The girl who wanted to be a great actress, a Sarah Bernhardt for the modern world, from the first moment she walked on stage in her Sunday school Christmas pageant. The girl who was already talking about the right way to bring up her future kids in junior high, determined to outdo her own parents' lacklustre efforts in the parenting stakes. The boy who wanted to be a famous pianist and spent every spare moment - and some moments that weren't so spare - practising until his fingers cramped and his back ached.

The boy who wanted to fly.

That boy had discovered early on that even a Superman cape wasn't going to help him make a smooth landing. It was a long way down from the garden shed roof to the ground, and an even longer way to the hospital, where a doctor encased his arm in plaster. In the weeks that followed, as the plaster cast was progressively covered with autographs and doodles and general graffiti, he'd come to the conclusion that if he was going to fly, he was going to need help. He was going to need proper wings.

His dad had taken him to an air show at some point in the weeks when he was waiting for the plaster to come off, probably as a distraction to try and stop him from driving the whole family crazy in his boredom. He'd seen a Tiger Moth with its papery biplane wings, which was cool, and a P-47 Thunderbolt from World War II, which was cooler, but when an F-111 shot over the top of everything else, dazzling like an elegant silver dart in the afternoon sunlight, that was when he'd first truly fallen in love. He wanted to be up there in that, going faster than a dream. He thought life had to be brighter and better up there, soaring high above birds and clouds and _mountains_, than anything on offer down here on the ground.

Some people decide what they want out of life at an early age, and never waver from their goal, but sometimes the path of life twists and turns in ways you don't expect.

In medical school, the girl who'd always wanted to be a doctor discovered that, unlike dolls, real bodies contain real blood, and lots of it. She became a psychologist instead. These days, Kate takes apart people's minds, a tiny piece at a time, with tools sharper and more cunning than any scalpel.

The boy who'd always been so fascinated with everything that ticked and whirred and hummed did become an engineer. And a scientist. An expert of the highest order when it came to making manmade things go. These days, Radek lives in a place so different from the technologically-deprived, Soviet-dominated Prague of his boyhood that it might as well be in another galaxy - as, indeed, it is. He works on technology beyond the wildest dreams of those long gone days, though he still spends most of his time taking things apart so as to try to figure out how to put them back together and make them work better.

At university, the girl who'd wanted to be the greatest actress of the age found the drama she'd been looking for in ideas and ideals and causes instead. She became an activist, and then a diplomat. Some of her former comrades said she'd sold out, and maybe she had, if you looked at things from a certain perspective. These days, Elizabeth is a civilian leader in a war zone, a politician in the midst of a military mission, in a fabled city on an unknown planet. She doesn't regret a single decision she made on the path that brought her here.

The girl who'd wanted a family more than anything got what she wanted - eventually. It was only after she'd lost her parents, and lost contact with her only brother, that she realised she'd had a family all along, however imperfect it might have been. And it was only after long years of loneliness that she found the man who could give her what she thought she'd always wanted. These days, as Jeannie changes yet another diaper, her thoughts stray to her long lost brother. She wonders if he's found something worth living for, too, and if he thinks that that something is better than family.

At twelve, the boy who'd wanted to be Rubinstein, Rachmaninoff and Liszt rolled into one closed the lid of his piano and never opened it again after his piano teacher told him his playing lacked heart. He decided to be the best at something entirely different. Something that didn't rely on the vagaries of emotion and interpretation and art. Something quantifiable and measurable. These days, if asked, Rodney would deny that he ever had a heart's desire, but in his heart of hearts he knows he's found it... and it's nothing at all like anything he ever wished for.

The boy who'd wanted to fly got his wish. He flew fast and beautiful planes, and powerful and dangerous helicopters, and discovered that yes, life was brighter and better up there above the clouds. The crash, when it came, was all the worse for that. He didn't end up with a fractured arm this time. This time, something more fundamental was broken. It took going to another galaxy to fix it. The fact that that galaxy shares its name with a fast, sleek little rocket that zooms higher than any bird or cloud or mountain or plane, as well as with the mythical flying horse for which it's officially named, seems more than a coincidence.

These days, John flies faster and farther than ever in a craft that's light years beyond anything any F-111 pilot ever dreamed of. But it's not the centre of his world. Not any more.

John never expected this... this. He's seen people live the happily ever after. Not many, and not often, but he's known more than one couple who seemed, from the outside at least, to want to be together, to want to make it work, with that same unwavering devotion that he'd given to flying since the moment he'd seen his future zooming across the California sky that day so long ago.

John figured that, like flying, happily ever after was something you had to chase and want with every fibre of your being. It wasn't something that was just going to happen to you. It wasn't going to come after you if you didn't go after it. He'd never sought it. Never wanted it. A married man didn't get to take the sorts of risks that made up his life. A married man didn't get to do the things that made him feel most alive.

He'd thought that maybe, one day, if he ever tired of flying, if he lived long enough to retire, he'd find someone and settle down into something comfortable and unexciting. Something easy for the later stages of his life, when he got to the point where the bright and beautiful dazzled too much.

Which is why he's so very confused right now. John never expected this to happen to him when he wasn't looking. He never expected _Rodney_ to happen to him. Rodney isn't comfortable, and he isn't easy - well, except when it comes to sex. He also isn't unexciting. When he's focused on something, whether it's an abstract mathematical problem, a life-threatening crisis or simply a kiss, he's as bright and beautiful and dazzling as an F-111 on a long-ago afternoon. Though, God knows, he'd be impossible to live with for weeks if John ever told him that.

John has lived with Rodney longer than weeks. He's lived with him for years now. Their life together is nothing he's ever imagined. It feels like flying. This is how he wants to spend the rest of his life, as part of something brighter and better than himself alone.

In flight, together.

In flight, because this is Pegasus, after all.


End file.
